What was once a radical idea–that the government maintain an income floor so no one citizen is ever in need–hit the mainstream in 2015.

At the beginning of 2015, few people had even heard of the idea of a basic income. It wasn’t a popular concept and few media outlets had mentioned it. By December, it was being discussed in hundreds of places, and several countries, including Finland and Switzerland, were seriously considering implementing it.

The idea is simple. Instead of letting companies pay people paltry wages and then supporting those workers with government programs, the government institutes a floor for income, so no one can make less than enough to live on. If you can make more at your job, you’re welcome to it, but no one would ever lack for money. It may sound like a revolutionary idea, but 2015 was the year basic income became a mainstream proposition, much to the delight of supporters who have long favored guaranteeing everyone’s minimum welfare.

To some extent, this was a media phenomenon: people jumping on a bandwagon. But it was also driven by fears about the impact of technology on employment, that existing welfare systems are expensive to operate and often non-helpful to freelancers, part-timers and micro-workers, and that work for a lot of people doesn’t offer a decent lifestyle. We can expect a lot more discussion of basic income in 2016, including the practical questions of exactly how it could work. Switzerland’s referendum in the fall will be particularly worth watching. Once the idea is in practice in an entire country, it may be hard to contain.